Martial arts has experienced a rebirth of interest in the last few years, as it has been known to do periodically. The children watching the "Power Rangers" TV show and the "Ninja" movies muster out in numbers at Karate schools, wherein they hone their skills and mental discipline and gamer the physical strength necessary for their art. During this process of converting millions of these gems-in-the-ruff to seasoned combatants, many wooden karate-chop boards must be broken with hands and feet in order for the students to judge their own progress, and for exhibitions to recruit more to the field of contact self-defense.
Whereas the practice of using wooden boards in such way, that is breaking them and throwing them away, falls short of burning rain forests in its impact on the world ecology, nonetheless there is no point in wasting wood, and it can become an unneeded expense to the school, and no doubt makes some impact on the ecology. For this reason synthetic boards have been developed, having breakaway halves which can be reassembled for re-use. The instant inventor has developed one of these boards, which is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,196,249 issued Mar. 23, 1993, and its continuation-in-part, U.S. Pat. No. 5,204,151 issued Apr. 20, 1993. These patents disclose a board which is created from a very tough plastic in a relatively complex injection mold. It is made in such a way that the two halves of the board are identical, coming from same mold cavity, each having staggered mortises and pegs which interfit with those of the other half to define a smooth, continuous integral breaking board when fully integrated.
The juncture between the mortises and the tenons is such that a certain compressibility is incorporated into the tenons, and corresponding expandability in the mortises so that in addition to being longitudinally slid together in the plane of the board when assembled, the board can also be separated into its two halves in a hinging action with no longitudinal separation at all, when impacted by a blow from the from while the side edges are being held by an instructor.
This board works quite well, and is even adjustable to accommodate the lesser breaking strengths required for junior athletes. In fact, any drawbacks it may have are not drawbacks to the training combatant, but to the person holding the board while it is being kicked. It is an unnerving experience for the novice, holding the board inches from his face while a foot moving a hundred miles an hour makes contact with the wood. Not surprisingly, the board holder often worries that the board will fly off and wind up in his face. Or the impact of the board on his hands will hurt, or that the board halves are not adequately attached together so that it will offer insufficient resistance and all of the forward momentum of the kick will be transferred into the board halves flying toward his face at almost-literally breakneck speed.
Whereas this fear may be unfounded, it is real insofar as its impact on the length of the line of eager board-holder volunteers is concerned. This alone offers good reason to improve the construction of the board and provide the holder with more control.
As an example, whereas the board works quite well when the two halves are pushed together, there is no definitive way of knowing to a certainty that the boards are mated all the way. Visual surveying may suggest that they are, but if someone who is holding the board took it in the chops during the last session because the board had not been fully joined, more than a visual surmise may be necessary to still his nerves this time around. What the person holding the board would really like is a definitive, tactile and audio "snap" characteristic of some connectors when the board halves reach full integration, so that complete connection would no longer be a matter of speculation.
To protect the holder, board holder handles have been developed comprising two hand grips, the hand grips each defining a flat stage to which the outer portion of the respective board half is affixed with a resilient cord. The karate kicker breaks the board and the board pivots around the handgrip toward the holder harmlessly, the two sides being held back by the handgrips. These devices reduce the wear on the hands and the wrists, and give the board holder the illusion that there is something that really will protect him, between himself and the flying foot. On being experientially disabused of this notion, the next time around he may feel inclined to take his chances with the bare board itself on the theory that at least he can wrap his fingers around it and be more in control of whether it flies into his face or not. But the fact is, holding the board without any kind of holder soon becomes very hard on the hands, as impact after impact is delivered straight through the board to the palms and wrist bones.
The person holding the board would be grateful for some accommodation to his soft tissue, and at the same time could appreciate a feature that would enable the board to be definitively captured by board handles in a manner that there would be no substantial chance of a board half flying off in his face.